Page 244 of Shadowblood Souls
I press a quick kiss to her temple. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Don’t worry about me.”
She squeezes my hand and then lets it go. As she heads into the ship’s interior, the ache that formed before clenches hard around my chest.
But the wound inside her now is one I have no idea how to heal.
Thirty
Riva
The light knock on my door makes my lungs constrict where I’m lying on the bed on top of the covers.
Andreas’s softly cajoling voice filters through. “Hey, Tink. I brought you a plate from dinner, whenever you’re ready to eat.”
“Thank you,” I say without stirring.
I know he’s hoping I’ll come to the door or invite him in, that he’ll have a chance to talk to me face to face. But the weight bearing down on my chest holds me in place until I sense him stepping away and heading back down the hall.
When I’m sure he’s out of view, I push myself up and trudge over. A large part of me doesn’t want to do anything except sink into oblivion, but the rest of me knows that’s not really an option.
I need food to keep my strength up. I can’t just fall apart.
As much as I feel like I already have.
The scents wafting off the plate Andreas prepared provoke a pang in my stomach, but when I sit cross-legged on the bed with the dish on my lap, I find I can only force down a few bites of the creamy pasta and braised asparagus. After that, my throat closes up.
Grimacing at myself, I set the plate on the bedside table for picking at later and flop down on my back again.
The daylight is dimming beyond the small window. I wonder how far we are from land—where exactly we’re headed to.
I haven’t talked to Rollick about his plans yet. Every time I think about facing him or any of the other shadowkind, I cringe down to my bones.
Our demon benefactor hasn’t pressed the issue, so I’ve avoided it for now. Maybe if I lie here a little longer, I’ll know what I want to say.
I’ll know how to sort out the mess inside me into something worth hearing.
I’m not sure how much later it is when another set of footsteps approaches my door. I can tell they don’t belong to Andreas or Dominic.
My body tenses, bracing for a summons or impatient questions. What actually happens is the lock clicks over and Jacob barges right into the room.
I jerk upward on the covers with a lurch of my pulse. “What are you doing?”
He kicks the door shut behind him but then simply stands in front of it with his arms crossed over his chest, like he sees no problem with invading my privacy but draws the line at infringing on my personal space.
“You’ve been hiding away in here all day,” he says, with an emotion I can’t identify smoldering in his icy eyes. “At this point, it’s obvious whatever you’re doing on your own isn’t helping.”
I scowl at him automatically, partly because I can’t say he’s wrong. “And you figure thatyoucan help me?”
His gaze seems to pierce right into me the way his poison spines once did. “I think I’m the only one here who knows what it’s like to have to live with the fact that you chose of your own free will to hurt someone who didn’t deserve it.”
His words sock me right in the gut. I flinch, my head drooping.
My voice comes out raspy. “I stopped as soon as I realized who it was.”
“I know. And you realized your mistake a hell of a lot faster than I did. So you can at least give yourself credit for that.”
I draw my knees up to my chest and hug them. “I proved the shadowkind who wanted us dead right. I showed that Ican’treally control myself—I’ll hurt people I wouldn’t even want to. I almostkilledhim.”
